What motivates students?

David Brooks said in a recent New York Times article that “lack of student aid is not the major reason students drop out of college. They drop out because they are academically unprepared or emotionally disengaged or because they lack self-discipline or because bad things are happening at home.”

I agree with this statement. Student aid isn’t the main reason students drop out of college. College students flounder for many reasons, including having to work while they are in school. But this isn’t the
main reason they drop out of college, or perform below their potential as they move toward graduation. The key to staying in college, and performing well, is commitment to academic study, or to put it more plainly, hunger to study.

A student came to see me about his first paper when he was a freshman (this was ten years ago), to show me a draft that he had written. I made a few suggestions, which he followed; it was by far the best paper in the class, better that those submitted by students who were in their junior or senior years.

I learned subsequently that this student had almost dropped out of high school when he was in the tenth grade after his father had been killed in an automobile accident. He took a job at a local Price Chopper (he was from Oneida, in upstate New York), working 35 hours a week. But he decided that he wanted to do something with his life, and to dedicate himself to his studies. His mother was a shipping clerk who worked for very low wages; it would seem that her son was faced with insurmountable obstacles; yet he had a desire to learn, and to improve his mind. This he has done.

My wife and I took a trip to England this May, and while we were there we went by train to Oxford, where I saw my former student whose father was killed when he was in the tenth grade. With him were his mother, grandmother, and younger brother. They were there to see my former student receive his Ph.D. at Oxford. The younger brother had also been a student at the University at Albany; he graduated with highest honors. He also took classes from me; he too was consumed by interest in the courses he took from me. This is the key to academic success, and students from any background will not only succeed in college but excel if they have this essential ingredient.
Even students who are underprepared will do well in college, and excel, if they want to. I have seen this countless times, but will cite just one example. Two students took three or four classes from me a few
years ago, and while they worked hard on their papers their writing skills were so deficient that they were unable to communicate their understanding effectively in proper sentences and paragraphs. They kept
coming in to see me about their papers, and while there was marginal improvement there was always a serious gap between what they knew and what came through in their papers.

Finally, a thought occurred to me: I asked one of the students (they came to my office together) to read the first few sentences of his paper out loud, which he did. He and his friend laughed when he heard his own sentences. The other student did the same thing and with the same results. Before these students graduated I read their papers in class as models for other students to emulate.

One of these students now teaches in a public school in Brooklyn. I wrote him a couple years after he graduated to see how he was doing. He said he barely made it through the first semester, so rowdy were his students, but by the next year when he entered the classroom you could hear a pin drop. As a student at the U at A he was dedicated to his own studies; as a teacher that same sense of devotion applied to his
students. He cared about his students, and they knew it.

The other student, his closest friend, got a job in a bank in Philadelphia. The last I heard he was enrolled in a Ph.D. program in mathematics while working at the bank. He was a straight A student in math at U at A, but was unable to write cogent history papers, until he made a breakthrough in one of his papers.

Minds work differently. Some students do well in history, some in mathematics. The key to success is wanting to do well, being dedicated to academic study, and choosing an area of study that is congruent with how one’s mind works. Sheer intelligence is helpful, but it it is not what is most essential to doing well in college, or even to staying in college.

I had a conversation with a friend yesterday whose daughter scored 796 out of 800 on the SATs, but something was missing and she did not achieve the level of academic success that was within her reach. This was true of several of my children. And it was true of me from K through twelve and in my first four years of college. Only when I returned to school four years after receiving my bachelor’s did I became
a real student. I have always been able to understand underperforming students; this had been my own story.

When I look across a classroom of students today and see blank stares on many faces I have some sense of what these students are about. I try to engage them, but altogether too often I am unable to. Many of these students attend class irregularly. The problem with these students isn’t an absence of student aid; the problem is with the students themselves: lack of focus, motivation,self-discipline, and most fundamentally, lack of intellectual curiosity.

David Brooks wrote in his column in the NYT that “You can’t measure progress by how many hours a student spends with her butt in a classroom chair. You have to incorporate online tutoring, as the
military does.” I would suggest that online learning has more potential uses than David Brooks indicates in this prescription. I would like to suggest a far more sweeping use of online learning than as an instrument
for tutoring underprepared students.

Students who enroll in classes that they seldom attend and in which they make a minimal investment or none at all would do far better taking them online. At least that way they would do some systematic work throughout the semester; they wouldn’t just cram information into their heads before taking machine-graded exams; they would have to do something that online instructors would respond to.

Many students want university degrees but they don’t want to do serious academic work. Online instruction would be far better for these students than enrolling in courses that they seldom attend, and in which
they have little or no interest.

I would propose that only students who want to study be allowed to take classroom courses. Courses offered in classrooms should be limited to students who want to take them; it should be seen as an opportunity, even a privilege, for students to enroll in classes where they and teachers engage one another in the exchange of ideas and pursue serious academic study.

8 Responses

as a fellow college professor I would argue that a major factor in the success of the students you described was your interest in their success and time you spent with them. that interaction provided them with a sense of belonging which research (and gut feelings) indicate is a key to student retention.
I, however, have to disagree with the last three paragraphs of your post. a properly designed and delivered online course must be more demanding and rigorous than its on-campus counterpart. therefore, online courses are only of value to the truly motivated learner. the student who lacks the drive and self-discipline to regularly attend an on-campus class is destined to fail in the online environment.

As a history Ph.D. and a tenured professor at a liberal arts college, I totally agree with Prof. Roberts’ comments. I didn’t become dedicated to, and really passionate about academics until my second year of college. And this was mainly due to a couple of really inspirational professors.

Wanting to learn is clearly the sine qua non of intellectual growth. This desire, while inherent in human nature, is too often smothered by a society that puts a premium on the financial rewards of education rather than on the intrinsic rewards of learning.For the latter to engage the student it is critical that he/she be exposed to teachers on fire with their subject and books of a classic nature that will bring the student to a vision that will teach him/her not only how to make a living but, mor importantly, how to live. Once this happens then classroom education ends and personal education begins.

A stellar high school record got me a full scholarship to a respected small liberal arts college. Since I had no clue why I was there, however, I floundered and left after a year. I worked menial jobs for another year and then went back to SUNY Buffalo with a strong focus and a goal (becoming a lawyer). Despite working part-time to make up for the lost scholarship, my GPA for that first semester back was 4.0 and I continued to do well academically through the rest of college and law school. Great professors helped, but the real difference maker was within me.

Dr. Roberts was one of the best professors I had at the University – facinating material, much of the art he talked about from his own observations from his trips to Europe. He also shares my passion for classical music. I wish more students took advantage of concerts at UAlbany – those same concerts in New York City are $50-$100 each instead of $5. I am thankful to him for his teaching. However, with the class starting before 9am, one had to be a good student to really pay attention – most college students are not really awake and alert at that time. One of the things that helps student is if they are surrounded by other good students – my roommate and I often went over the material before and after class and it certainly helps.

To be honest, basically monetary greed! They know if they regurgitate appropriately per each professor or teacher, that eventually after taking a large number of useless classess, paying thousands of hard earned dollars to egotiscal educators, paying excessive and greedy book prices, except for the Elite or endowed and anointed, they will eventually get a piece of paper and have been mentally trained to respond to the liberal left wing best ability, or to not think at all, but to just regurgitate the prattle of 30 or so egotiscal losers who rake in the big bucks who could not make a living outside of the University so therefore they Teach or better yet spread and infect the mindless minions with their personal viewpoint which is of little value in a real world….

So for doing so the Student is rewarded with a piece of paper that supposedly means they know something, but really they don’t for little of what they were forced to memorize and regugitate is useful in the Real world of Work except for maybe the hard sciences!

Meanwhile the Educators who can, bug them for research dollars to further line their pockets with….

What the system needs is a total revamp. Bring back the true Educators who actually had brains instead of bank accounts and actually made the Students think, instead of having to be forced to listen to their egotiscal prattle about how great they are and where they have gone on their summer vacation…

As a retired Manager of 23 years I can say that. For the students of today are poorly educated and companies spend billions re-training the Graduates and retraining the Student minds to think in the real world as well as what is needed to be known to be successful..

Meanwhile the University just raised it’s fee’s to line the pockets of the so called Educated Elite who are just former greedy hippies from the 60′s and 70′s who figured out how to make big bucks via education instead of selling dope or starting a Commune then turning it into a Winery or writing the many books on Liberal Dribble….Losers in reality.

One factor that led to my first year troubles at SUNY Albany was not getting into classes needed for my major. I thought I wanted to study Computer Science and had indicated so on my application. When I arrived at orientation and submitted my proposed schedule, I discovered that CSI 201 was filled by upperclassmen. When I tried to enroll in CSI 201 in my second semester, it again was filled by upperclassmen. I gave up, almost failed out, and finally discovered the History Department in my fourth semester.

One thing that might help SUNY students stay on track is a guarantee that the courses required for a particular area of study are available upon enrollment.